Want to get better at technical writing? I’ve been writing prose (READMEs, wikis, and this blog) with Vale for months. It’s helps me write better, faster. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Vale is a “linter for prose.” It gives you tips like this.

$ vale README.md
README.md
4:3 error Did you really mean 'existant'?  Vale.Spelling
6:12 warning Use 'use' instead of 'utilize'.  Microsoft.Vocab
9:1 suggestion In general, use active voice.  write-good.Passive
✖ 1 error, 1 warning and 1 suggestion in 1 file.

It’s running in my text editor with Vim and ALE:

# .vimrc
let g:ale_linters = {
\   'markdown': ['vale']
\}

You have to configure it to show the warnings you want. I’ve configured it to follow the Microsoft styles guide, which you can see in my dotfiles repo. In any repo, I can then run:

$ vale sync

And get my configs applied.